


In Waking Hours

by laughingtoucan



Category: Trigun
Genre: Animal Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Child Death, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Imprisonment, Mental Disintegration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:14:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27299239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingtoucan/pseuds/laughingtoucan
Summary: Nick's introduction to the Eye of Michael is not a kind one.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 6





	In Waking Hours

Since Livio had disappeared, things had become grayer at the orphanage for Nick. The kid had been a real pain in his side starting out, but despite that, they’d gotten close. Livio had practically become his little brother. With him gone, there was less pleasure in the world, less to be warmed over. Nick couldn’t help feeling personally responsible, no matter what Melanie told him. Against instructions, he’d raced out into the night with the other adults looking for Livio, calling his name, screaming it over the dunes.

Coming back at the rise of the twin suns the next morning, completely empty-handed was one of the toughest things he’d ever had to do.

Until he was adopted.

Come and build churches, they said. Feed the hungry, aid the poor.

It all sounded like chump work to Nick. Honestly, if he’d had his way, he’d have rather stayed at the orphanage and helped there. There were still plenty of kids who needed feeding, clothing, and helping. He liked them and they were hard enough for the adults to handle some days. He didn’t want to sit around and wipe up after snot-nosed and able-bodied adults who couldn’t help themselves. But he would be one less for Gramma Melanie to worry about. One less mouth to feed, one less back to clothes, one less brat to find a family for.

His new family made Cinderella’s look like saints.

Had he known what was to come, he would have taken sleeping in cold ashes and scrubbing floors over life within the Eye of Michael without question.

There were no churches to build. Everything here was already raised, with buildings built piecemeal of wood, concrete, and metal--all materials organized across the complex by each facilities’ purpose: concrete and wood above ground, metal for those built below.

Orientation went smoothly. The interior was cool, cold even at times. Familiar only with rickety construction and warped wood, Nicholas marveled at the architecture and technology scattered through the labyrinth of halls and rooms.

Physical examinations looked into height, weight, heart rate. Doctors drew blood in small samples and murmured amongst themselves as he laid still on a table (toes wiggling nervously in his threadbare shoes), subjected to numerous scans, none of which he understood and instead struggled to focus on the aggressive hum of the machinery.

They were pleased to note he had no defects–visible or otherwise. They accepted him on that, took his things, and smiled sharply as they shuttered him away into a group of boys similarly aged, half-clothed and shaking in the dark.

Nick turned back–there must have been some mistake. But the heavy door was shut, locked. Steel, unlike the standard paneled wood. Gone too was the slick and even tiled floor. Instead now, rough, soiled concrete. The adult doctor who had led him through was gone. Nick’s stomach clenched and and forced himself to turn back to the others--

Children. They were all children. All of them.

–he looked into their eyes. There was fear there, real and raw and it made him scared and sick. Some looked like they hadn’t eaten in ages. Another looked ill, secluded from their pack in a far corner. No one was helping him.

What the fuck was wrong with this place?

“Hey–” Nick closed into himself, arms pulled in tightly and his stride truncated into short, quickly-paced steps. He weaved through those sitting on the floor to the far, otherwise vacated corner and knelt beside the loner child, who coughed. The room around them flinched and drew further from the two.

Nick’s throat felt thick, fighting against him as he swallowed down his rising apprehension. “–I said–”

Across the room, “He’s sick. Don’t touch him.”

Nick’s fear for his condition evaporated as his instincts as a big brother kicked in, rising like a wave meeting a shore. His brows puckered in and he frowned. He didn’t bother to look back. “Of course he’s sick, idiot.” He snapped, laying a hand against the boy’s forehead. “That’s why you’ve gotta touch him.”

Hot. His hand snapped back.

“He’s going to die.” They all sounded the same behind him, quiet, held together with less than the glue he’s used to held mend one of Gramma Melanie’s broken dinner bowls with.

Nick’s hackles rose, bristling at their words. Who the hell did they think they were? What kid turned away another like this?

His thoughts drifted back to Livio and how the others at the orphanage had turned -so quickly- on him after they’d found the dead puppy’s blood on his hands. Nick’s stomach turned again and soured.

Like a Greek chorus, the others remained unmoved, individual voices popping in and out with the identical shaken tones. All seemed to speak from a disembodied place, disconnected from the world. “H-hey…where are you going?”

Nick stalked back to the door and pounded, two-fisted against it. “Hey! HEY! There’s a sick kid in here! Doesn’t anybody care?! I know you know we’re in here! HEY! MORONS! OPEN UP! HE’S SICK–!”

He called out, yelled, and screamed himself hoarse, his throat and lips dry. Hours passed, the entire night even. No one spoke, spare for Nick’s entreaties, which all remained unanswered.

Morning, as far as Nick could tell of it, came in a far different light. The door opened and instead of the children rising up as one and bursting out, they remained still until addressed by the adult in black. The bright lights of the halls reflected against the silver crosses adorning the dark coat. After so long in the dimmed room, the lights beyond were nearly blinding and Nick’s lips drew back into a silent hiss. The sick boy coughed until he shook, but the new adult’s impassive gaze washed over and away from him, favoring the healthy. 

“Meal time.”

The boys filed out. Hesitantly, Nick followed.

What the adult called ‘meal time’ was actually exercises, and not the sort Nick had ever been used to. The concrete was more polished here and the wooden, tightly pieces walls rose higher than a barn. Instead of watching the girls jumping rope and the boys roughhousing or playing ball, he watched the children–himself included–be led away, split into heats of two or three, and pitted against one another. Sprints. Weight lifting. Climbing. They were simple actions, but repeated at a grueling pace with little to no time to rest in-between.

“T-this is so fucked up.” Nick gasped, short on breath and shorter on patience. “What the hell is going on?" 

No child responded. The adults paid him no heed. When he pressed again, a name was called. The child attached to it approached and struck Nick, fist balled tightly, in the gut. The world upended in Nick’s eyes and shuddering and gagging, he lay there until the exercises were called to an end. When they began to file out, with no one in sight preparing to help him, Nick drug himself to a wall and crawled himself upright. Finally standing, he limped off after them, clutching his stomach. 

He was starving.

When he refused to return to the room, he was thrown in. Food came later, but none for Nick. When the door closed again and his shocked confusion hadn’t wavered, another child spoke up, "Failure.”

The sick boy hadn’t been able to follow them. He received no food as well.

The logic came to Nick swiftly after that. To eat, you had to perform and perform well. The fastest, the strongest–all those who made certain marks would eat, would drink. Some times, the expectations left for the children to reach would change abruptly, with no reason or rhyme. Nick made sure not to fall short of another one.

With the sick boy unable to participate, Nick began to share his food. 

“Useless.” Said one boy. Nick flipped him off and dropped a rude comment. And despite Nick’s compassion, no one still approached he or the sick boy in their corner.

However, after two weeks, Nick’s performance began slipping.

At first, his thoughts had been preoccupied with escape and sunk what little effort left in him at the end of the day to try and catalogue enough around him to gain him an edge somewhere. Then slowly, his attentions began to shift… He found himself counting the hours, minutes, seconds until any other given time in the day. Eight hours until meal time. Four hours until the half mark. He pretended he could judge the passage of time, counting on his fingers in the quiet, filling the monotony and silence with the numbers.

He was hungry often and sometimes the corners of his vision encroached with white static, with the world wobbly and unsteady beneath him.

It wasn’t so bad, Nick told himself. He’d be fine. Then he began to cough.

The other boys began to look upon him like a leper, some narrow tower of filth, built of trash and feces and disease. He finally understood why they avoided the sick boy, why no one shared anything, food, water, kindness, or otherwise.

There just wasn’t enough.

Weighed heavy with guilt, Nick’s fear for his own life plagued him in ways far stronger than what his compassion chained him to. He stopped sharing his food, his water. The sick boy died within a week.

Eating for himself, split against no other, Nick’s health rebounded, as did his ratings. Strong, fast, and mean, he carried on as one of the tops in his group. After a month longer, things changed. Activities carried on as before, but meals no longer accompanied them. A day passed as usual. Then exercises ran multiple times a day. Passing marks were awarded with yesterday’s hunger and empty bellies. Those with failing marks were given to the older children–teenagers, really. Those that failed were separated and not seen until hours later, bruised and battered, inside and out.

Nick refused to falter, no matter what. To do so, a single instance where he could not perform at his peak would leave him compromised. And as he watched as another bruised boy stumbled to their knees, vomiting, Nick knew to be compromised was tantamount to failure and death.

At the end of the third day of hunger, when those who could still move were filed out into the exercise room, though Nick could barely blink comfortably, his eyes painfully dry, he noticed a group of adults lined up against the far wall, some with clipboards in hand, others with nothing, and all in white suits. Upon them, opposite to all those Nick had seen to that point, instead of silver crosses, they wore gold.

“Color me surprised, Chapel.” One white-suit noted, smiling brightly from behind a reflective, wrap-around visor. “The girls’ groups put on a good show. I’m shocked you didn’t take one of them this time. You did the first time, didn’t you? Don’t you think it’s about time for a change?” 

Parked on the sidelines, fresh from a “warm-up trial”, Nick doubled over and gasped for air, his lungs burning as the exchange caught his ear. His eyes struggled to focus as each word digested--a poor substitute for a warm meal. His blood ran cold.

He had watched children die in the night and for his own self-preservation, had been forced to swallow down every ounce of rage in his body as doctors removed the still-warm corpses with the same indifference one might afford a bag of garbage.

\--and these bastards were laughing?!

The man addressed as ‘Chapel’ stood frighteningly still, hands clasped behind his back. He scowled, brows furrowed, eyes locked dead ahead to the spectacle before him. “It was a girl first, a boy before that. And before that, no one. Which I choose and when that happens is none of your business. If I wanted your input, I would beat it from you myself.” He reached into a pocket and produced a cigarette and lighter. With the end lit and burning away at the sterility of the room, he tucked the lighter away. He filled his lungs with the hot, dry smoke and pushed it out in a burst of sharp, precise stream. “Do not make me waste my breath a second time.”

The nameless white coat stiffened and turned with a soft apology, placing a respectful distance between them without effort to retaliate in the least. Nick found himself both immensely terrified and attracted to Chapel. The man was power, untouchable power. Somewhere in Nick’s mind, he begged: 'safety’.

Eight boys remained out of the original twenty-three Nick had been teamed with. Some, of course had died in the night. Others collapsed during their overnight reprieve in the dim room, unable to stand. One more fell on the walk out to their trials today. Nick wasn’t sure how much longer they would all last, but for all his anger over the disinterest of the adults, his urge for survival, to fight and to win, culled him over. He’d seen a boy try to run for freedom the day previous. He hadn’t made it to the opposite wall before the black suits had sicced the teenagers on him. He’d been torn apart. Nick had never seen anything bloodier in his life. He remembered Livio, the puppy, and the darkened smears of red across his little brother’s hands.

No, compared to Livio, distant and faded under the hot desert sun--this memory was hot and fresh and pungent. Muscles ripped. Ligaments popped, cracking like gunshots as they tore. Nick had tried to cry as it unfolded. He’d wanted to. But he was too tired, too thirsty. Too angry and scared. He’d pushed everything out to this point in their many exercises, spent himself raw in the burn of adrenaline. He flickered now, weak and dim.

But nevertheless, he burned.

Today, barely recovered from their warm-ups, Nick lined up like livestock with the rest of those in his age group as another nameless middleman explained to them their course. Their final course. 

Nick would have run barefoot through fire to have it end. He bit his bottom lip, teeth dug into the worry-split flesh and waited with tension humming through him as instructions came...

It was a rope-climbing exercise. It hung down from a plate mounted beneath one of the cross beams of the ceiling. Seated soundly on that narrow beam was a bucket full of water. The winner, he was told, would receive it. And not only that;

“If your performance is found satisfactory, you may be chosen by one of our esteemed guests to receive special accommodations and training.” A sweeping gesture was offered to the white coats, all whom remained stone silent, surveying the lot with shielded eyes. The announcer continued; “Those found lacking will remain on the grounds until the next scheduled trial.”

The offer was freedom or death.

Already pale, Nick’s pupils blew out at the sound of the starting whistle. He ran, sprinting before he even realized he’d heard it.

Heel. Toe. Push.

It was impossible not to be acutely aware of the jarring shock as it fractured up from his feet, all the way up through to hips. Left, right. He reached out for one of the boys ahead of him.

His vision fragmented. 

Like standing too 

quickly. It was white 

and black. In pieces? and suddenly 

very dark and 

very still.

Somewhere in that stillness, he shuddered for breath that would not come quickly enough, coughing in violent bursts as he struggled to move against some unseen force, surrounded by a flurry of voices and a sharp rattling crackle that rung out with every jerk and twist he fought with. 

He blinked and the darkness sloughed him loose. Above him were two things: a doctor and the ceiling. He was on the ground, held and hastily swaddled in a mylar blanket.

“What’s--” He coughed again, though spare for the lump in his throat, swallowed much more smoothly than he’d been able to in days. His lips were wet, his mouth slick. None of the sickening aftermath of mucus or vomit lingered. 

It was water. 

And he could not remember how it got there. 

Somewhere above, in the haze of the distant ceiling, another face drifted in. The scent of smoke triggered Nick into a fresh peal of coughing. The man with the golden cross peered down as he blew out another lungful, building wispy grey and white clouds between them. “This is the one.” Detached. Cold. But very final. “This is the one I want.”

Chapel.

His face was framed by a well-trimmed, lightly colored beard and short bangs. Hidden behind a pair of compact sunglasses, Nick could not see the man’s eyes. Again, albeit brief, he tasted fear.

The doctor slipped away and Nick shuddered to right himself as he clung to his blanket, no softer than anything else he’d received here, material or otherwise. Chapel looked him over and Nick felt utterly disrobed by the man’s gaze. 

“Come with me.” Now, his tone commanded. Chapel turned and stepped to leave.

Nick struggled to stand, knees weak and his body uncooperative. Despite this, his heart leapt and he managed to respond, using his words as his leverage to rise. “Yes sir.”

Nicholas had survived the screening process. In that, he walked away, steps sluggish and heavy, tucked behind Chapel like a nervous dog–with three lessons; Never question commands, adapt, and never, under any circumstance, fail.

The next morning, with a stomach sated and an IV plugged into his arm, he wheeled the drip in as he otherwise soundlessly followed Chapel into a new room, one much smaller than what he was used to.

“This is the monitor room.” the man explained. Nick remained close by Chapel’s side, near, but never touching. He wanted to crawl into his savior’s waiting arms and hide there, waiting for his second wind to come. He remembered taking Livio in on nights when the younger’s dreams left him restless and teary-eyed, and recalled the comfort he had lent Livio through it. Would it be the same? Would he be allowed that? 

Deep down, hope and doubt lingered in equal parts. Nick swallowed them both down and buried them. 

Going home was hardly even an option in Nick’s mind. He just wanted to be safe, be fed. Chapel had promised him that in the aftermath of his trial, towering over Nick’s bed as the boy watched, exhausted and removed as the specters of the Eye of Michael floated in and out, tending to him. He believed Chapel.

He would survive.

Nick didn’t know what a monitor was, but he assumed by the way Chapel gestured, seated before a large desk, he decided that it, with all it’s buttons, must be one. He watched Chapel’s fingers tap out a sequence and waited. Ahead, at eye level, a slick black mirror flickered to life and Nick straightened up quickly to watch the images that suddenly danced across it. 

No, he corrected himself. This is a monitor. 

On it, a scene strangely familiar began to unfold. The scene came pinned at a high vantage and Nick watched two rows of people file into a room: one old and one young, one clothed in white and one hardly clothed at all.

This was yesterday, he thought.

On screen, he watched the eight young men line up. Children. Weary. Starved. Dimming. 

With no sound to accompany it, he filled in the blanks easily; in that space, once upon a time, his heartbeat pounded in his ears, the shrill cut of the whistle pierced the air, and the thunder of feet against the floor shook the entire expansive room as the boys took off.

Nick frowned. His past self trailed behind at the tail end of the pack. Two boys at the front made it to the rope and fought for the right to ascend first. The rest of the pack collided into them and they swarmed there, squabbling with what little strength they had left. One boy dropped, kicked by another ascending the rope, clinging to it with hands, knees, and feet. A second followed suit after him. Nick hit the pack charged with a completely different kind of energy.

It was like watching a rabid dog.

A fist slammed into one boy’s head, just below the ear. An elbow connected, point first into another’s throat.

Nick stood, transfixed as he watched his yesterday-self brutalize the other children. Here today, Chapel, watched with him drink in the scene, unbending. “This is what I ask for. This is what I want.”

Past-Nick grabbed the lowest on the rope by the ankle and pulled the leg outward. Today-Nick watched his fist connected in to the knee and watched the victim’s mouth gape and twist. The crunch of bone and the scream that followed echoed quietly in Nick’s fractured memory. 

Had he really done all this..?

When he flinched, Chapel’s voice grounded him--pinned him in place. “Don’t look away, Nicholas. It’s not over yet.”

The boy with the broken knee crumpled to the ground, writhing. When he tried to get up and escape, the feral dog wearing Nick’s skin stomped the other’s throat violently enough to tear skin on the first strike. With the body under him wriggling weakly, but otherwise paralyzed, past-Nick immediately filled the vacuum left behind and scrambled up the rope after the final boy. The last one was strong, but past-Nick was desperate. He grabbed onto the other by the ankles and kicked off the rope and let his weight drag the other down. His enemy’s palms burned from the friction of the roughly hewn rope as he sank, but still, the boy would not let go. He shouted and bucked, before finally kicking free and began his climb again.

Frozen beside Chapel, Nick swallowed fearful as he watched on.

Angry for letting the other escape so far, past-Nick took up the end of the rope and shook it. The beam above stood steady. The bucket sat unmoved.

The other boy kept climbing. So past-Nick pulled. He gritted his teeth and snarled and dug in his heels until the whole thing took up a forty-five degree angle. He screamed. The video feed lent nothing but moving images, but Nick knew the sound. It was a howl, a roar. It cracked and strained, but filled the room as he twisted the thick rope around his hands and arms. It echoed as the beam began to bow and fracture.

Nick remembered the sharp crack of the wood as it shattered against the metal piecing that the rope hung from. The rope went slack. The boy fell, and so did the beam. He hit the ground limp as it slammed down atop him. He did not get up.

The buckled fell with the rest and spilled out in a graceless arch. It rang like a bell as it struck the cold concrete and the water sloshed out in a wide and spattered puddle.

Shaking, past-Nick stumbled forward and dropped low onto his hands and knees, lips and tongue and teeth against the floor as he drank what remained. He drank and shook and cried and drank. Eventually, past-Nick stopped, curling onto himself. A black-suited doctor slipped into frame and wrapped him into a thin silver blanket that crumpled around Nick’s slim frame.

Clad in his usual white, Chapel’s ghost stepped forward into the scene to lay his claim. The video playback stopped, the screen flipped to black again.

“That is what I want.” Chapel repeated to the silence between them.

Nick could not find the voice to respond.

“We start tomorrow.”


End file.
